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Paris?

I've been a permanent resident
of the City of Light for years, 34 years to be exact, but the
charm of the world's most beautiful city continues to operate.
Whether strolling past the Eiffel Tower, sipping an espresso
in a café, or ambling by the Seine, it's always as if
it were the first time.

To live in Paris is to live with
the constant jolt of beauty. Writer Joe Murray opined that "Paris
should be declared as an international shrine...The people of
Paris should work at no other job than simply that of being Parisians."That's a job
I'm definitely happy to work at.

The Paris Diary, a selection
of some of my monthly Letters From Paris on The Paris Pages
brings you coverage of current news in France - the debate over
the Islamic veil, worker's strikes - from the perspective of
a veteran freelance journalist and writer.

October 2003 - Hijab, not Hermès
- The Islamic veil in French schools (Letter From Paris)

It used to be that when you talked
about French women and scarves, the reference was clear : how
beautiful their scarves are, how well they wear them. Who, other
than a French woman, could tie a scarf with such grace and elegance
?

These days when you talk about
scarves in France, it's a very different matter. The head scarf
in the news is hardly Hermès. No, it's the hijab, a scarf
worn by some Muslim women as an expression of religious devotion
and modesty. Important note : not all Muslim women wear the hijab
and nowhere in the Koran is it written that women are required
either to wear a scarf or cover themselves entirely.

In France, it's not unusual to
see Muslim women wearing scarves of varying forms and shapes
and colors. It is however rare to see Muslim women covered from
head to foot à la Saudia Arabia or Afghanistan ­ but
you do see that from time to time as well depending on where
you live. As a tourist, you won't see it unless you stray from
the Champs-Elysées and the Latin Quarter into the more
multicolored districts of eastern Paris.

Recent problems with Muslim schoolgirls
wearing the scarf to school are creating havoc with France's
self-image. France stands at a crossroads for although it is
a mutlicultural and multiethnic nation, it remains ­ and
is proud of being - a secular
society.

Fierce battles were waged in
the beginning of the 20th century to remove religion and religious
signs from French schools. The huge crosses that hung over blackboards
were torn down and students were told that they would not be
allowed to wear " ostentatious " signs of their faith,
be it Jewish, Catholic, or Muslim. Practically speaking, that
means that a student in France can go to school with a small
cross or Star of David or a discreet head scarf ­ but the
buck stops there.

Over the past years some Muslim
schoolgirls have challenged this rule by wearing scarves that
go so far beyond the definition of " discreet " that
they head right down the road to " ostentatious ".
This vociferous and obstreperous minority (there are only about
ten cases a year of problems caused by " aggressive head
scarves "), has made the head scarf the worm in the apple
of French secular society and especially French education.

And France obviously doesn't
know what to do about the problem. Most of these challenges are
solved away from the limelight on a case by case basis by the
principal of the establishment. Most of the times the Muslim
schoolgirls and the school administration reach a compromise
agreement and nothing more is said.

That's the best case scenario.

The worst case scenario was exemplied
recently with Alma and Lila, two young French sisters and recent
coverts to Islam who insisted on covering themselves entirely.
When the teachers and the administration tried to discuss the
matter and negotiate a compromise, they stood their ground ­
and were expelled.

Some say " shame on the
French Republic and its schools " to reject two young girls
who may just be going through an adolescent crisis. (Neither
of their parents, incidentally, is Muslim). Others say "
why break a law that's been around for a hundred years and has
worked ? " If the French had wanted religion in their schools,
they wouldn't have taken down the cross in the classroom. (And,
come to think about it, how would the fully-covered Muslim schoolgirls
react to studying in a classroom with a huge cross on the wall
?)

If only it stopped in the classroom
These young women don't confine their religious requirements
to the wearing of the hijab. They also refuse to participate
in gym classes with boys and want special women only swimming
privileges. In American, you would say : " Fine ! We're
a multicultural society and we tolerate and welcome all ethnic
groups. A Kosher meal here, a hijab there, no problem. It's a
big smorgasbord and there's something for everyone. " That's
the U.S. which is not only a multicultural society but one based
on " communities ".

France has also been a
highly centralized society whose aspiration is for everyone,
black, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, to be French first and "
community " second. In the French Republican ideal, the
French school should represent and strive toward that goal. People
can " do their ethnic, religious thing " as they wish
­ as long as it's not done in a French school or a French
public administration. This idea of a non-religious society and
of a centralized nation in which the concept of being French
is more important than being black or Jewish or Buddhist is an
idea now being brought into question by minority of French Muslims.

A recent case in which a Paris
municipal employee, a female Muslim social worker, refused to
take off her veil at work and refused to shake the hands of men
has got the Paris City Hall in a tizzy. Did they kick her out
? No. Negotiations been going on for two years in an attempt
to come to some kind of mutually acceptable agreement.

Explaining the school's decision
to expel Alma and Lila, Philippe Darriulat, a professor of history
and geography, wrote in Le Monde : " For us, it's really
the question of secularityin a public school, should we apply
the rules which apply to all the people working there or should
we accept that each person adopts behavior dictated by his personal
convictions and encouraged by outside influences ? " Like
most teachers, Darriulat's first priority is to explain why the
school, in the name of a secular society and in the name of women's
rights, opposes the scarf. Generally, he says, a compromise is
reached. Sometimes it's not.

It is clear that the French may
have to reconsider the old laws or at the very least define a
new and clear policy reinstating the rules of a secular society.
A commission has been set up to study the problem and President
Jacques Chirac has promised he will address the nation on this
important issue before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, I have a question
: if I were a devout Catholic or Jew and lived in a Muslim country,
could I go to an Islamic school wearing a cross or a kipa ? I
don't think so. Correct me if I'm wrong. It's for that reason
I don't think the French should go on a huge guilt trip. It's
not France's problem if these particular Muslim women need to
cover themselves or have separate swimming pools or gym classes
to be treated with respect by Muslim men. French men and women
have always gotten along fine together. It's up to the minority
group to conform to the majority, not vice versa. When in Rome.

Does this mean intolerance or
lack of generosity ? Absolutely not. Just as two-year-olds do
everything they can to try their parents' patience, these young
and sometimes very young Muslim girls and their families are
doing the same to the authority figure which in this case is
the French Republic. And like the father or mother of the two-year-old,
the Republic must point out the rules and insist on their enforcement.

A multicultural school with different
ethnic groups in a secular setting, yes. A school composed of
totally different communities, each only interested in itself
and insisting on its rights, no.

In the International Herald Tribune,
Catherine Field, whose thesis is that France's secular society
is no longer adapted to the times, writes that " Religious
tolerance comes from integration, and integration itself comes
from mutual respect, fairness, open-mindedness and female empowerment.
"

Female empowerment ? I'm sorry.
I don't see how the veiled women of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan
or any other Muslim country are in any way, shape or form empowered.
But that's their culture. So be it. When we go to their mosques,
including their mosques in France, we take off our shoes at the
door to respect their tradition. When they to school in France,
they must take off their scarves to respect the tradition of
the society in whcih they live.

It's called, simply, mutual respect.
And since the great majority of France's Muslims exercise respect
and tolerance, you've got to wonder about those who don't and
who's behind them. The scarf, I fear, is just the top of the
iceberg.

There are two ways to look at
summer in Paris when you're a native and not planning a summer
vacation: You can be desperately jealous of all
the Parisians who have fled the city for the mountains or the
seashore or the country - or be insanely happy to be in Paris
without the Parisians.

I've always belonged to the latter
category. I like summer in Paris, finding it at its best without
all the Parisians and their collective, and contagious, stress.
Granted, there are a few drawbacks. Some of your favorite shops
shut down and it's not always easy to find your (twice) daily
baguette. In fact, every daily errand becomes a veritable expedition
as you try to figure out which boulangerie/boucherie/fromagerie
is open on what street and on what days.

For in a weird ballet of openings
and closings, some stores stay open in July, others in August,
others from mid-July to mid-August. The challenge
for those of us who remain in town is a) getting this down pat
in your mind so that you don't run errands for nothing and b)
being prepared to walk a long way to get your clothes cleaned
or buy a steak.

KIOSKS
- But not being able to find your favorite place open is nothing
compared to not finding your favorite place at all! As I walked
to the Place Gambetta on my way to foray for food at the wonderful
food shops on the rue des Pyrenees, I discovered to my horror
that the news kiosk on the corner had purely and simply disappeared
overnight!

Right up there next to last month's
closing of one of the neighborhood's two charcuteries, I counted
this as one of the truly horrid disasters to befall
our quarter. What, I speculated, would happen if the fellow selling
the Wall Street Journal, The Independent, The Herald Tribune
and a host of Turkish, Italian, and other foreign language papers
from exotic lands vanished? There are other newstands around
but none offered such a variety of publications. Being a newspaper
addict, losing the kiosk would be tantamount to a coffee lover
losing his local café. I needed my daily fix!

I immediately strolled over to
confer with my favorite newspaper salesman, Ali. Did he know
what this was all about? Since Ali knows most of what is going
on in the neighborhood, I was fairly sure he'd have a clue.

"Not to worry," he
told me. "They're putting up a bigger and better stand."
But, he said, that won't solve the problems facing Parisian "kiosquiers",
many of whom work in spaces so small they are known as "standing
coffins". Compared to a "kiosquier", Ali's set-up
is heaven. He holds court in his own shop where he has a lot
of room to walk around in and arrange the daily and weekly arrival
of newspapers and magazines. He has time to chat with the regulars
and besides newspapers, sells buttons and thread, greeting cards
and various and sundry other items.

A kiosquier, on the other hand,
stands up all day long in the equivalent of a broom closet, squished
amid the special supplements and magazines and
newspapers he or she often can't sell and can't return until
a certain date. The crowning indignity is that none of the stands
have toilets so if the
kiosquier is working alone, he or she either has to close the
stand to go find one or in the worst case, end up peeing... in
a bottle. (I didn't make
this up - I read it in a magazine that did a special article
on the plight of Paris's kiosks). Small wonder that some 60 Parisian
newsstands have closed. We're all happy they are there - but
no one would ever want the job.

PARIS PLAGE
- So in the end I didn't lose my favorite newsstand. Another
good summer surprise amid the obstacle course of daily life is
Paris
Plage, Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe's contribution to summer
fun. Let's see...Before Delanoe, Paris in summer was hot and
noisy and polluted
and most everyone here wished to be somewhere else, say, for
example, on a lovely beach with palm trees whose leaves swished
in the breeze. Dream on...

Did the Mayor read minds? Last
year for the first time City Hall saw to it that a large piece
of Paris near the Seine was transformed into one big
"plage", complete with... sand and palm trees. With
two million visitors, It was such a raving success that this
year's Paris Plage, which will run
from July 20 to August 17, promises to be even bigger and better,
starting with the importation of 2500 tons of sand as opposed
to "only" 800 tons last year.

Only one problem with Paris Plage:
you can't take off from the beach to swim in the Seine. Cleaning
it up will be the next major move. (And tough luck if you're
feeling the need of a cool swim in one of Paris's pools - better
check first as 50 per cent of them are closed. You got it: CLOSED
in July and August. Go figure.) In any case, thank God for Delanoe.

One thing no one could have forecast
was this year's sizzling summer. Paris has had depressingly frigid
and rainy months of July and August so I
personally am not complaining about the heat spell. This IS a
northern clime, however, and people here aren't used to living
the way the Italians
and the Spaniards do, with their shutters closed during the heat
of the day and everyone inside their houses until it cools down.
No, here in Paris,
everyone goes out as usual, the result being a lot of wilted
listless looks and frayed tempers. Some stores and cars are air-conditioned
but many are
not, the reason being that it's not worth having air conditioning
for the few days a year the temperatures soar to unbearable.

Fortunately our car IS air conditioned
which has given me the opportunity to ride around in it this
week with great pleasure. I even found myself
dreaming up excuses to get into it and away from sweltering Paris.
"Let's get out of here!", I suggested to a good friend
who readily assented. We hopped into her little orange Citroën
convertible and one hour and a half later were comfortably installed
at a sidewalk table at "Les Vapeurs" restaurant in
the charming coastal town of Trouville, a small popular seaside
community on the Norman coast. After feasting on shrimp and mussels
and whelk and mayonnaise and cold white wine, we sauntered to
the seashore, cast off our sandals and sank our bare feet luxuriously
in the
warm sand. Le paradis!

That was Monday. On Wednesday
my son and I drove out to our country place west of Paris, an
hour and a half away from our apartment in the east of the city.
It takes a while to get off the peripherique (ring road) and
highway but you know you're on your way when you hit the green
and gold fields and see the farmers harvesting wheat.

You also know you've left Paris
when you get in a line at the supermarket and it takes twice
the time it does in Paris - I mean, who's in a rush out
there? The benefit of getting out on the road was that I had
my 22-year-old son as a captive audience (and he me). We both
thanked the heat for allowing us to catch up with each other's
lives and spend a pleasant moment in air conditioning!

Had we driven further, we would
have been in Chartres, one of my favorite places to go. But we
had errands to run and weren't being tourists that
day. Chartres, whose magnificent 12th century cathedral I have
visited many times over the years with greater and greater pleasure,
would have to wait.

AND SCINTILLATING LIGHTS ON THE
EIFFEL TOWER - The country's great but who can resist the lure
of the city? Back in Paris,
I admired the Eiffel Tower's new sparkle. Every night from sundown
to 2 a.m., the 324 meter (1,063 feet) high tower lights up ten
minutes before the hour with dazzling blinking lights. It's as
if the most beautiful woman in the world has donned her very
best dress to honor her admirers.

Behind a beautiful dress, of
course, is a designer and an army of seamstresses. Behind the
Eiffel Tower's dazzle are some 20,000 light bulbs, 40 kilometers
of electrical wiring, 60 tons of metallic parts and an investment
of 4.55 million euros. It all looks so easy. However, workers
installing the lighting had to contend with high winds, rain,
sleet and snow, gawking tourists and the scary height. Fortunately
the head of the company in charge of setting up the new lighting
is....a professional mountaineer.

ON
THE CANAL - Another fun thing to do in the summer in Paris: the
three-hour boat ride that takes you down the Canals of Paris
to the Seine. You can either board the boat at the Musée
d'Orsay and travel to the Parc de la Villette in the east of
Paris, or vice versa. We chose to start from the Parc de la Villette
and end up at the Musée d'Orsay. I never tire of floating
past the romantic streets of Paris some 26 meters above the Seine
and slowly descending a series of 19th century locks as tourists
watch...the tourists.

I even learned a new piece of trivia from our guide. As our boat
went past some cinemas, he asked us if we knew who the most famous
French actor was. No one could really come up with much of anything
and in any case we were all wrong. The answer: Rin Tin Tin! The
famous actor dog is buried in the Dog and Cat Cemetery in the
Paris suburb of Asnières, a quirky place to visit once
you've done all the major sites.

THE "BAC"
- For French students, vacation is a time to rest and relax.
And for French students who have passed the "Baccalaureate",
the French school leaving exam, it's a time to celebrate. This
year 80 per cent of those taking the exam succeeded - in spite
of mammoth teacher's strikes. (Cassandras say that because of
the strikes, some teachers scored higher than usual to make up
for their absence but that's hard to prove).

The "Bac" is all important
- and difficult. France is one of the only countries in Europe
requiring students to take Philosophy, a subject they
are tested on at the "Bac" -- and it ain't multiple
choice. This year's choices of essay questions included "Is
dialogue the path toward truth?",
"Why are we sensitive to beauty?" and "Is happiness
a private affair?" I've always thought that the French complicate
their lives much more than we
Anglo-Saxons do but perhaps that is because they have simply
been trained to think in a more complex way. Nothing's black
or white.

STRIKES - Well, nothing except the strikes which
have paralyzed the country since this spring. First it was the
teachers, unhappy about a reform that would decentralize the
highly centralized educational system. In addition to the teachers
strike, an attempt by the conservative government to reform the
current costly retirement system brought thousands of angry citizens
to the street. At one point, too much was too much and just when
you thought that every Frenchman in the country was for the strikers,
thousands of people who were angry with all the work stoppages
took to the streets to stage a counter-demonstration!

Summer came and with it a strike
by actors and technicians furious at the government's attempt
to augment the number of hours they need to work to
collect unemployment insurance in their downtime. The result:
the closing of most of the country's finest and most prestigious
festivals, including
Aix-en-Provence and Avignon, two of the biggest. French actors
are already more privileged than most people who choose that
profession. In the States, most actors are waiting tables; in
France, a generous country to its workers, part-time actors collect
unemployment during the time they are not working.

Statistics show that France has
the fewest number of strike days in Europe. It's really hard
to believe since it seems like someone is always on strike.
But that's normal: France is a country of groups with certain
privileges. When a group, whether teachers or civil servants
or actors, see the end to
these privileges, they do what comes naturally - in France: they
take to the streets. That's their right, of course. However,
much damage has been done as the festival cities, the SNCF and
RATP, and large and small companies have lost major money.

And where are all these enraged
citizens now? On vacation, of course. They've got to rest up
for September's strikes! Get ready, everybody!

BASTILLE DAY
-All the contention and social strife was put aside on Bastille
Day when the traditional military parade on the Champs-Elysées
took place among greater security than usual after a deranged
right-winger tried to assassinate President Jacques Chirac at
last year's parade. This year Chirac, who stood and waved to
the crowd as usual from his car, was entirely surrounded by the
impressiv ely clad Republican Horse Guard. Hard to get through
horses!

The night of the 13th, many Paris
firehouses opened their doors for the traditional Firemen's Balls.
We strolled over to the one in our neighborhood around 11 pm.
It cost 3 euros to get in and once inside, we were struck by
the conviviality of the scene. Babies and grandmothers, young
couples, tatooed types, groups of girls, groups of guys, blacks,
whites, Asians all mingled together. Some danced to the music
emanating from the hard rock band (I always imagined dancing
to the tunes of Edith Piaf - how wrong I was!), others sat down
to chat and drink their champagne or beer or...Coke!

And all were happy to be in the
company of their heroes, the Parisian "pompiers", who,
in my opinion, are as handsome as can be! I'm not alone -
July 13th and 14th are traditional nights for romance and the
pompiers have their pick! On the evening of July 14, the scene
changed, radically. The Firemen's Ball in our multi-ethnic and
"not very rich at all" neighborhood gave place to a
party on the swanky terrace of the Hotel Meurice where we were
invited to the enormous duplex of a friend of a friend of a friend.

It's always fun to live in a
city and see things you never dreamed about. On the terrace,
which looked directly over the Tuileries gardens (more trees
than one sees from below!) and had a 360° view of Paris,
we sipped champagne (better than the champagne at the Firemen's
Ball!) and oohed and aahed at the view of Sacre-Cour, the Eiffel
Tower, La Défense and the fabulous fireworks the City
of Paris puts on each year at Trocadero. As we reluctantly left
the party, my husband glanced at the door and saw the room rate:
12,000 euros. "I think he got a room rate," our friend
remarked, and we all laughed. Even with a BIG discount, it wasn't
anywhere near our range!

The sight I will never forget
from that terrace wasn't the fireworks, which was the reason
we were there. No, the best and most memorable sight from
that superb terrace was a huge perfectly round orange moon floating
between the towers of Notre Dame. As we drove back home, I caught
another glimpse of the moon. It had become even larger, had almost
doubled, it seemed. It had turned a shimmering white and floated
high, high, high in the sky.

The big debate in France these days is
over "insecurity" and "incivility". It's
such a burning topic of concern here that the entire Presidential
election was focused on it (which is why the far-right leader
Jean-Marie Le Pen found himself propelled to Presidential candidate
- hey, here's someone who's going to DO something about the degenerating
climate of crime not to mention the simple everyday acts of gross
behavior, graffitti, insults even to French institutions and
the French flag. (two examples : the France-Algerian soccer game
was never finished because young French-Algerians ran onto the
playing field ; in another incident, Corsicans hooting during
the playing of La Marseillaise before a soccer game). The first
time, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin didn't react (bad for his
score). On the second occasion, President Chirac left the stands
until a public apology was made.

Actually some statistics show
that the crime rate in France has not increased and in some cases
has even decreased. What has changed though is the steady diet
of incidents fed to French people everyday on the news. Right
before the elections, not a day went by without a report on some
hideous crime in some French town.

Crime is one thing : incivility
and non-respect of others is another. I never thought incivility
would strike the area I live in, a weathy enclave near the Bois
de Boulogne. Until a few years ago, this neighborhood was perfectly
calm. Then a new type of neighbor moved in (I won't say what
race or nationality because I really don't care about whether
people are pink or purple or brown or WASP or Jewish or Buddhist
- however I do care a lot about RESPECT - and the new guys on
the block are singularly lacking in that quality.

Our once clean and quiet apartment
building is now filled with noise, people banging doors and talking
loudly. Last summer when our neighbors went on vacation, they
left for the airport at 4 a.m. How do I know this ? They didn't
even bother to lower their voices as they waited for the elevator
! The new tenants don't smoke IN their apartments, preferring
to indulge in their favorite habit in the stairwell. That way
they don't stink up their apartments but all the rest of us get
their secondary smoke in our apartments ! Their children's bikes
and prams and skateboards are parked smack in front of their
doors - against all the regulations. Their balconies are filled
to the gills with everything from freezers to old decrepit sofas
to mysterious looking plastic garbage bags.

And here's the clincher. When
the concierge, a non-aggressive type, timidly reminds them of
the rules, the reply is: "We pay the rent." Hey, me
too !! When you live in this kind of environment, you tend to
get hostile toward the people responsible for it. Which is not
a good idea because there are always slobs in every group of
people and hostility can and does breed racisim.

The problem in many working class
suburbs is the same on a different scale. You get a group of
people who are disturbed by another group of people who talk
loudly, rev up the motor of their cars or motorcycyles, bar them
from entering their apartment buildings, write on the walls.
The people living in these buildings have small salaries and
no where else to go. They're stuck in a place they don't want
to be with people who are entirely uncivilized. Le Pen says he'll
get rid of those people (who, in this case, are Arabs).

That won't solve the problem.
Because there are plenty of Arabs in France who have totally
integrated, who respect the law, who are part and parcel of French
society. Unfortunately, people have a tendency to vote with their
feet for the candidate who can solve their problems. Le Pen was
defeated in the presidential elections but his National Front
Party can still garner votes in the June legislative elections.
We'll just have to wait and see.

So you may ask me: is there a
problem for tourists? Ironically, I have to say that I have always
walked around Paris and still do without any qualms. I don't
lock my car doors and I don't jump everytime I hear someone behind
me. Sure, there are pickpockets in the metro and you have to
be careful about your handbags and pocketbooks and exercise the
same kind of vigilance you would anywhere you are travelling.
Other than that, France is a safe place to travel and contrary
to reports in U.S. newspapers, it is not anti-Semitic.

Those of us who live here are
saddened, though, to see the degradation of ordinary courtesy
and politeness, in the everyday acts of civility. I wrote in
French Toast that the French act according to certain codes including
"ca ne se fait pas" (that isn't done). That particular
code seems to have flown out the window as the French more and
more do just exactly what they like without thinking of the other
person ( the basis of civil behavior).

Double park? Drive your street
the wrong way down a one way street ­ on purpose ? Bring
your dog to a restaurant in defiance of hygiene rules? Breeze
through a red light? Smoke in a non smoking area? All of these
acts are committed on a daily basis with the offenders not .apologizing
or feeling guilty in any way.

When you remind offenders, as
my son did with someone who was smoking in the metro and my husband
did with a person whose dog was climbing all over him in a restaurant,
of their offenses, you'd better watch out. In the good old days,
France was the capital of verbal ­ not physical ­ violence.
In this new France I don't recognize, people are much more ready
to get into a brawl rather than have a civilized discussion about
their differences. (The smoker told my son to ---- off ; the
dog owner threatened my husband with a head-butt and a bottle
of wine he was getting ready to break over his head before the
restaurant manager called him off).

I consider that I live in a country
where anything can happen because a great number of people are
no longer respecting any rules. And rules are what make it possible
for people to live together.